Your Canon Photos No. 41: 11th to 17th February 2024

This weekly thread is principally intended for you to showcase your photos made with Canon cameras of all sorts: SLR, DSLR, Mirrorless, M-series, APS-C, film, etc. But any brand of camera will be accepted, including photos taken with your phone. We do enjoy reading an accompanying text explaining your photo and any special techniques you may have used. Comments and helpful criticisms on others' photos are also welcome: we can all learn something from each other. We look forward to seeing your contributions and new participants to this series of threads are always welcome!

A new thread for the following week will be posted next Saturday around 10 pm UK time.

Digirame and I will be active here and are sharing the hosting, but we are used to all joining in and commenting on others' photos.

Review of last week

While there are rumblings of spring here in central Europe (it was 16°C today!) I havent yet seen the evidence that Digirame showed us, with a bee in a crocus blossom. A good catch!

My fish pie was a very transient experience, though much enjoyed.

Simplejoy's walnuts and chestnut were a break from his more abstract creations. The pods of walnuts actually do produce a black liquid, the stain of which is hard to eradicate.

I admire Steve's insistance on going back to first principles. His 30mph car equates to 44ft/sec, and with an exposure of 1/640 sec, it would have moved 0.825", which is certainly as good as frozen. Was the sunrise photos also on tripod? 1/8 sec is pretty ambitious for hand held.

I am too lazy to take my tripod, unless I want to frame the shot hyper-accurately, and have developed the ability to hand hold exposures of 1/15 sec with success.

Digirame's storm cloud looked quite threatening. I would have liked to see the cars more clearly though.

Fotoworld's insects and birds are always excellent, and look very exotic to me. All the shots are wonderfully sharp.

Digirame has moved on from ducks to cormorants. As a city mouse, I have never lived anywhere with such variety of birds. Seeing the bird with outspread wings made me wonder whether the feathers would be good for the harpsichords that I play. I am currently using swan feathers.

Then there was the dog riding in the baby carriage. I assume he was convalescing. I have frequntly seen dogs with wheeled walkers when they have problems with their rear legs.

Simplejoy also got out and about with more wintery closeups.

A perfect reflection in Digirame's lake view. Finally he found some ducks!

Great shots, guys. I envy the choice of subjects that you have in the country.

David

David,

On last week's photos with the storm clouds, the reason the cars could not be seen clearly, is that it that it was close to night time. I spent every bit of the day playing around with the camera. And true to form, I did not even quit even when being in the car at the end of the day. I don't know if I also explained this was taken from the car, as the passenger.

Here's another one taken from the car, but I brightened it up a little so you could see all of the cars with the headlights on.

Model - Canon EOS RP
ExposureTime - 1/320 seconds
FNumber - 8
ISOSpeedRatings - 500
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 94 mm
Lens Model - RF24-105mm F4-7.1 IS STM

Digi,

I definitely think that being able to glimpse the cars and the road helps to give some intererst in the larger part of the picture; but dont know whether your software gives you independent control of that without also lightening the clouds. Just seeing the queue of lights is good, however.

David

@Digirame, you could perhaps lighten the shadows a bit more but it is a nice picture, it does give me a driving home for Christmas feeling 😋

The weather is more like autumn in the Netherlands at the moment, temperatures on the high side and we had again a lot of rain...
To much rain I think, many field are little ponds and also in the nature reserves you'll see flooded areas or changed into swamp-like areas.
We did go for a short stroll, with a limited selection of gear. We wanted to test new Garmin watches.

Just some random shots today.

The sky really was that blue - no polarizer used.

A miniature affect:

And converted to grayscale:

And lastly, some pine needles.

Steve Thomas

Subject: Dust Bunny

OK, in the car again.... 😀 I was taking pictures of random things this morning and I saw a dust bunny on the lower left side. Yikes!!! See the picture; it was too large as you all can see to be comfortable with just accepting it. I rarely get these dust bunnies because I leave the lens on each camera. I have a camera for every lens...it's just the way I do it. 😀

So, I tried repeatedly to use the auto sensor cleaning method as found in the menu. Nope, the dust stayed there. I must have done this about ten times. The dust could be seen in the viewfinder and the JPEG image. Then my camera started failing. I discovered that the viewfinder/LCD screen auto display was not working. Long story short it was the sensor on the outside of the camera near the viewfinder that needed cleaning. Once I cleaned that, it was working again. Yay!

Well, before I fixed that VF/LCD screen problem, I was in a bad mood with this camera. So don't hate me for telling you all this. 😀 So to get rid of that dust bunny, I decided to blow it out, not with propellant air, or compressed air but a battery powered blower that I use to blow dust out of computers. I kept the blower about a foot from the camera and with the lens removed I blew air into it for about 2 or 3 seconds. Well, the good news is that the dust bunny was immediately gone. Yay again! The camera works well without that dust bunny (I didn't wreck it) and the VF/LCD screen auto display works perfectly. So good news indeed.

Well, I'm not going to post any more pictures now, because I have to get ready for the NFL Super Bowl. It's a major deal like a soccer (football, futbol) championship match you all have in areas outside the US. I've got a tons of photos to show for this forum...so tomorrow will probably be when I'll do that. I got some more Hooded Merganser images too, but they are even better than last time. OK...later, alligators. 😀 I hope you like seeing my dust bunny that bit the dust. 😀

Model - Canon EOS M50m2
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 200
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 45 mm
Lens Model - EF-M15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM

Photobygms,

I enjoyed seeing your photos so we could experience what you saw on your hike. It does look a lot like what we normally have in winter in Oregon with lots of clouds, ponds of water, and rain. My favorites are the cows, if that is what you all call them. I suppose they are relatively safe since they do not have long sharp horns. But a herd of these domesticated animals still make me nervous, nervous enough to keep me away from them. They weigh so much...no match for any of us.

Steve,

I especially liked seeing your blue sky. I've noticed in the winter that when there's some rain and wind, the air particulates can be less. So we get that pretty blue sky. That's what I showed last week at a lake. In the summer there's too much haze. The sky is OK in the summer, but just not as nice as what we can see now. So despite the cold that should motivate us to get out and take more pictures. 😀

David and Photobygms,

If I don't forget, I could redo the storm cloud images a little later. What I did not tell you all also, was that we were seeing the beginning of the storm clouds as they pass from the Pacific Ocean over the coastal range (we are looking west). It wasn't the main storm...just the band of clouds that indicate that it's coming. It was truly dark where you had to drive with headlights, so I can't remember if brightening up the roadway would be a little unnatural.

I purchased some inexpensive DxO software recently that I should get in a few days, maybe I could play around with these images with this software. It was inexpensive because it was introduced about six years ago. I saw it on YouTube; it looks like it has a good denoise feature for JPEG and RAW images. I should probably have bought the latest and greatest software, but I'm a little frugal sometimes. 😀

Light handshake by simple.joy, on Flickr

Quest for the origin of light... by simple.joy, on Flickr

Com-four-table-top by simple.joy, on Flickr

Simplejoy,

My favorite is the one with the round lights. I don't know how you created or captured that, but it looks neat. What is that, that caused it to look that way?

Subject: Hooded Merganser

The Super Bowl game ended a few minutes ago, so I thought I would show my selection of Hooded Merganser ducks now (instead of tomorrow). It's unusual to be able to get this close to these kinds of ducks, but I was lucky to find them at a certain location. I know to expect things to change, so before the ducks decided to move on, I thought it would be a good idea to try to capture them again. Fortunately, I had some sun too. The first five Hooded Merganser ducks are male and the last five are female.

Photo No. 1

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 500
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 500 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 2

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 500
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 500 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 3

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 1000
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 450 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 4

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 1000
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 483 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 5

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 640
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 483 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 6

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 10
ISOSpeedRatings - 640
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 600 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 7

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/500 seconds
FNumber - 10
ISOSpeedRatings - 1000
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 600 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 8

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/640 seconds
FNumber - 10
ISOSpeedRatings - 1250
ExposureBiasValue - 0.33
FocalLength - 600 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 9

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/640 seconds
FNumber - 10
ISOSpeedRatings - 1250
ExposureBiasValue - 0.33
FocalLength - 600 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Photo No. 10

Model - Canon EOS 800D
ExposureTime - 1/640 seconds
FNumber - 10
ISOSpeedRatings - 2000
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 600 mm
Lens Model - TAMRON SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD A011

Subject: Male Mallard Duck

I thought this turned out well. Sometimes you can capture these ordinary ducks in a special way. If you find any yourself, please share them.

I took these about 10 days ago.

Photo No. 1

Model - Canon EOS Rebel T7i
ExposureTime - 1/800 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 3200
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 216 mm
Lens Model - EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM

Photo No. 2

Model - Canon EOS Rebel T7i
ExposureTime - 1/800 seconds
FNumber - 9
ISOSpeedRatings - 4000
ExposureBiasValue - 0
FocalLength - 220 mm
Lens Model - EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM

Pictures 2-5 all look the same to me! 😀

I hope your team won!

David

@stevet1 Nice to see you have also sunny days!

Winters used to be a bit more colder and with snow and ice (on canals etc)
Those cows were still young ones (heifers) and curious, These are not dangerous 😉
But is just overall an good idea to treat animals with respect.
And a nice sets of ducks 👍

@simplejoy, do like those photos, but the Carl Zeiss bokeh is just bit different than I would have expected, thought it would be more smooth

David,

Thanks for taking the time to look at the ducks. They are all definitely different. I should have alternated male with female, so that it looked better that way. The Kansas City Chiefs won the game. It was very close. It went into overtime. I was rooting for the 49ers our West Coast team. We don't have a NFL football team in Portland, Oregon.

Photobygms,

Thanks. I'm glad you liked the ducks.

I went out today for some exercise, as it was not drizzling. The sky was, of course, overcast. Then the sun, which was in the south, came out from behind the clouds, though by the time I was set to take a picture, it had gone back in again. It continued to play this game for a while. Later, around 2pm, I was near the Opera and noticed that, though the skies in front of me were very thick and dark, the foreground was quite sunny with long shadows. It looked like rain; but there was none.

David